List of Attacks

What would you do if someone were
killing in the name of your religion?

What Ahlam Tamimi
Teaches Us about Islam

You learn more from what people
do
or don't do than from what they say

"If Islam were truly against killing, one could hardly
imagine a scenario more tailored to evoke Muslim outrage than unrepentant child
killers literally receiving the royal treatment at Islam's holiest site..."

Is Islam really against killing people? That's what we always hear in
the wake of high-profile terror attacks, even if it contradicts what we usually see.
Sometimes we're even told that the terrorists aren't Muslim (despite what the terrorists themselves think and say).

But talk
is cheap. Actions speak louder. Do Muslims really act as if killing is against their religion? Consider the case of Ahlam Tamimi:

Terrorists could hardly make it more obvious that innocent civilians are being
targeted than when they bomb a restaurant packed with dozens of women,
children and babies. This is exactly happened on August 9, 2001
at a Sbarro's pizzaria in Jerusalem.

The monster who picked out this target was Ahlam Tamimi, a female journalism
student from Jordan who also planted a bomb at a grocery store in the same
area. Tamimi was not shy about her religious motivation in murdering innocent
people:

This is the path. I dedicated myself to Jihad
for the sake of Allah, and Allah granted me success.
You know how many casualties there were. This was made possible by Allah.

Among those casualties whose murder was "made possible by Allah" were at least seven children and a pregnant woman, along with eight others. Nearly 130 suffered injury, some maimed for life.

It's hard to imagine a purer example of innocent people being
killed in the name of Allah than this. Were it truly an offense to
Islam, what better opportunity for Muslims to prove it by demonstrating their outrage.

Here's what happened instead (in Ahlam Tamimi's own words):

Afterwards, when I took the bus, the Palestinians were all
smiling. You could sense that everybody was happy. When I got on the bus,
nobody knew that it was me who had led [the suicide bomber to the
target]... inside the bus, they were all congratulating one another.
They didn't even know one another, yet they were exchanging greetings...
As the number of dead kept increasing, the passengers were
applauding.

Ahlam Tamimi received 16 life sentences
for her role in the attack. From an Israeli prison, she snubbed her
victims and made it quite clear that she had no remorse or sympathy for them.
Her only regret was that there were not more of them:

I admit that I was a bit disappointed, because I
had hoped for a larger toll. Yet when they said "three dead," I
said: 'Allah be praised'...Two minutes later, they said on the
radio that the number had increased to five. I wanted to hide my
smile, but I just couldn't. Allah be praised, it was great.

Even during that interview, over 10 years later, Ms. Tamimi expressed joy
when hearing for the first time that eight children had been killed
- one more than what she had previously thought. In fact, she could not stop smiling at the news.

So, here is a devout Muslim
not only killing people explicitly in the name of Islam, but openly praising Allah for the slaughter of children... just
the sort of thing that Muslim leaders in the West claim "horrifies" them.
Yet, what was their reaction? Total silence.

At this point, apologists might say that there was no point in
expressing outrage at the time because it was a localized event in
which justice was served. How does it affect them, they might ask.
Terrorists aren't even Muslim, remember? Some nut does something bad
somewhere in the world and
Muslims elsewhere have to answer for it? Why, that sounds like "Islamophobia!"

But wait... that isn't the end of the story.

Despite her crime, Ahlam Tamimi was
part of a group of terrorists released in an October 2011 swap for an
Israeli prisoner of Hamas. Muslims could have protested her release if
they felt that she were guilty of "horrifying" crimes in the name of
their religion. None did.

Instead of being outraged, some Muslims actually celebrated Ms. Tamimi's
release. In fact, she was treated like a hero - and not just by
Palestinians. The keepers of Islam's holiest sites
subsequently invited
her to perform the pilgrimage to Mecca along
with the other terrorists as guests of the Saudi king!

The pilgrimage known as the Haj is one of the Five Pillars of Islam. It is so important
to the religion that tens of millions of impoverished Muslims, some disabled,
scrimp
and save for decades to be able to afford it. The
waiting list in Indonesia can be up to
39 years
- and that's after spending an average of one month's income just to
be in the lottery.

Despite the tremendous
oil wealth of the Arab world (and the
pretentious
fashion in which it is squandered), most of the world's pious Muslims never make the haj
due to cost or
lack of space...

They should try killing innocent people in the name of Allah, because that's
exactly what earned Ahmal Tamimi and her fellow terrorists an all-expense paid trip to
Mecca on a private Saudi jet!

If Islam were truly against killing, one could hardly imagine a scenario more
tailored to evoke Muslim outrage than unrepentant child killers literally receiving the
royal treatment at Islam's holiest site.
So, how much outrage was there? Zero. Absolutely none.

If Muslims want people to believe that they believe terrorism is an offense to Islam, then
they completely blew the moment of truth test. The religion notorious
for throwing deadly tantrums
over hijabs,
films,
books,
cartoons,
church buildings,
stuffed teddy bears
and monkeys couldn't
bring itself to even go through the motions of outrage when terrorists butcher innocents in the name of Allah
and then get feted at the expense of other Muslims at Islam's holiest site.

(The episode also belies the aphorism that terrorists "aren't Muslim", since it
is a fact that non-Muslims aren't allowed to set foot in Mecca, much less
live large while pilgrims elsewhere in the city are almost literally
starving in horrid conditions).

Clearly, when we are told that Islam is "against terrorism and the killing of
innocent people," all is not what it seems. The truth is that Islam has its own
definition of "innocent people" in which heretics, apostates, 'hypocrites',
consenting adults and non-submissive infidels do not qualify, and so killing them isn't
"terror", but divinely sanctioned punishment or jihad. In fact, Muhammad said he had been
"made victorious through terror," and the Quran prescribes
harsh treatment of
both non-practicing Muslims and unbelievers.

This doesn't mean that most Muslims agree with the violence, but
the contradiction between what their religion teaches and what their
hearts tell them accounts for their ambivalence - and our skepticism. Empathy for those outside the faith is never encouraged by Islam, explaining why
the Muslim community acts almost the opposite of how it is expected to much of the time,
and why the passion and outrage in denouncing Islamic terror is largely absent in
comparison to what we see when Muslims are genuinely offended over something relatively trivial.

Non-violent
Muslims are fond of saying that they can't be held responsible for what another person does.
Fair enough. But aren't they responsible for what they choose?
The case of Ahmal Tamimi isn't about what one person or one group teaches us
about Islam. It is about what all Muslims teach us by choosing to stay
quiet in such glaring circumstances.